Sitting and Staying in Mystery

We are called to laugh and grieve with our brothers and sisters. This seems obvious to many of us. Yet Ecclesiastes encourages us to ponder how to laugh and how to grieve with others. There’s a beautiful tension in this passage. On the one hand, there is a “present-ness” to the laughter and grieving, a recognition that we are firmly planted in a time of rejoicing or a season of lament. As companions, we are to sit and stay with others in their joy or in their sorrow, not to rise quickly to point a way forward, or simply throw them a platitude while walking by. No. We are to sit and stay. We are to experience that sacred time for what it is with those we journey with, knowing that as we sit with one another, Christ too, sits with us.

Yet, on the other side of the tension is an invitation we are to extend to one another. It is an invitation into mystery. The teacher in Ecclesiastes writes, “God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” In our limitedness, there is a mystery to how all our experiences fit into the grand scheme of things. In the midst of mystery, we are to invite one another to tenaciously trust (and perhaps barely at times!) that God is doing something beautiful and eternal, even through the fleeting moments of our lives.

In what ways is God leading you to journey with others in their joy and grief? How is He inviting you into the mystery of your experiences in this season?